


Liquorice

by august_d



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Boarding School, F/F, Minor Violence, Slow Burn, Teen Angst, Underage Drinking, gals bein pals, tags updated as i go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-09-28 22:46:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17191691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/august_d/pseuds/august_d
Summary: “Welcome to the fun zone,” Jester says, digging around for a key in the depths of her coat pockets. It’s a wonder it could ever be lost – when Jester pulls it out it’s weighed back down by a cluster of charms. Some are little beaded things, some clunky and wooden, a few twisted lengths of plastic string. They all click and clank together. It’s very Jester.(Beau gets sent to boarding school in the middle of nowhere. It sucks, and everything about it sucks. Almost everything.)





	1. Chapter 1

The last day of summer is hot and wet and a million years long, almost as long as the winding road Beau’s father has been driving them down. Her feet are cramped in her shoes and she itches to kick them off into the pristine abyss of the footwell, if only she could untie them without being noticed.

Rain hammers on the window, less like raindrops and more like a waterfall, obscuring her view of the scenery outside. From what she can make out, there’s not much to see. Green smudgy land blurs into grey slate rock faces, blurring into grey clouds. They’ve been driving steadily upwards for at least a few hours now. Twenty minutes or so ago Beau’s ears had popped, and the left one still crackles painfully when she swallows. She swallows often, trying to make the crackling go away faster. It hasn’t worked yet.

“I’m hungry,” Beau says, voice a little louder, a little rougher than maybe she’d intended.

“You should have eaten more at breakfast,” her father says, not taking his eyes off the road for even a second. His voice is rough too, but without any of the hesitation.

“I wasn’t hungry at breakfast.” Beau leans forwards enough to rummage through the rucksack at her feet, looking for anything identifiably edible. There’s a book, worn soft around the edges, a bag of marbles, heavy enough to knock out a tooth or two if swung correctly, and a collection of other items she can’t quite put a name to without looking at. Her hand closes around something hard and rectangular and covered in layers of brown paper. A going-away-gift. She zips her rucksack back up.

Beau doesn’t like presents, typically. Presents or surprises. Presents, surprises, or long winding paths up the side of a mountain range in the pouring rain. To take her mind off how shitty all these circumstances are, she leans her head back against the headrest and tries to fall asleep.

To her credit, it almost works – another few hours pass in a kind of dreamlike state, entertainment coming in the form of half-remembered dreams that make no sense, would make no sense even if she could piece them back together from fragmented memories. The sky was dark with rain, but now it’s going dark from night. It keeps getting darker and darker, and Beau grits her teeth together in a grimace to keep from yawning.

“We’re here.” As they pull to a stop, the wheels grind against stone, spraying it all over the drive. It’s a long driveway, skirting the edge of a cliff face and coming to a stop in front of what looks like a manor house, if a manor house could have multiplied over the centuries, spawning extra wings and conservatories and miniature adjacent manor houses. Vintage-looking lamps line the drive, and light a path up to the front door. The lawns in front of the main building are neatly kept, if a little trampled, and there are half a dozen other cars on the parked on the drive. Attached to each is a family; some small, some large, some so large it’s a wonder their luggage fits in there somewhere. Some are tearful.

Beau isn’t crying. Her eyes stay resolutely dry. Her father isn’t looking at her, and she isn’t looking at him, but she knows he isn’t crying either. Beau doesn’t cry.

“Is this it, then?” Beau says, watching as a fancy lady in a fur coat brings her daughter in for a hug, and then another, and another.

“Your case is in the trunk,” Beau’s father says, and he’s facing the fancy lady too but he’s not looking at her, “I expect you to behave. I’ll see you for the winter holidays, and not a day before. Don’t make me drive back here for you.”

“I’ll see you next July,” Beau says, and she opens the car door, swings her legs out, and searches for something witty and cutting to say, her last retort; “Fuck you.”

“ _Beauregard_ -” Before her father gets a chance to speak, Beau slams the door shut so hard she expects the glass to shatter, and runs around to the trunk to haul her suitcase out onto the drive. No sooner than she shuts the trunk, the car is moving again, rolling off into the night. She turns away from the slowly fading headlights, two red dots shrinking out of existence, and towards the warm glow of the manor.

The night is chilly, and other people are making their way towards the entrance, so Beau stretches her legs for a second and follows them. She’s stiff from being cooped up in the car for too long, and her brain feels foggy. This might not be real. She might be in a dream. The manor might be too high above sea level for her liking.

A woman stands in the doorway, holding an umbrella but not using it, and she’s stopping each group passing by her to talk about something. Beau looks around quickly, but this seems to be the only available entrance – or at least the only one she knows about so far. She doesn’t intend to be here long enough to find any others. Falling in behind a large group (six or so people, she can’t imagine how they fit in one car) seems like her best option right now.

Looking around at the small crowd bottlenecked around the entrance, Beau can make out a few other loners, kids who might be around her age. Most of the kids with their families seem younger, much younger than she is. Maybe it’ll seem as if she’s alone because she’s too adult and independent to need her family to send her off – not that that’s an incorrect assumption, really, but still.

Despite the variety of faces, no one quite looks similar enough to her to look like she’s part of the family. Shame. She can either try to slip through by herself, or attach herself to one of the older kids.

Or just, you know, speak to the woman with the clipboard. But there’s been a mistake, and Beau isn’t really staying here, so there’s no point. Before she can make a decision, frozen by the thought of so many bad options, a hand taps cautiously on her shoulder. It takes a lot not to startle, to whip around with her fists up.

“Yeah?” Beau says, finding herself face-to-chest with a much taller boy, dressed in a uniform meant for someone smaller and with fewer muscles, “Can I help you?”

“Hey, are you lost?” He holds out a hand that Beau takes but doesn’t really know what to do with, “I’m Fjord, I’m Blue house leader, if you just give me your name I can get you oriented-”

Fjord starts to turn towards the woman with the clipboard and Beau slips out of his grasp, backing away a few paces with her arms resolutely folded, “No, thanks, I’m not, uh, I’m not enrolled. I’m just here to send off my little sister, you know how it is.”

“Your sister,” Fjord repeats, casting a glance around the area and clearly finding no miniature Beau.

“She’s adopted,” Beau blurts out with a forced laugh, and as a tiny figure squeezes between the two of them Beau snatches a spindly arm that turns out to be covered in layers of sleeves and bandage-like wrappings. Still, little sisters can be weird. Beau’s had her fair share of bad fashion sense in the past. “Here she is, I’ve gotta go-”

“Get off me!” A cracked voice shrieks from stomach height, and the girl tears her arm free right as someone else’s elbow is driven into Beau’s back, shoving her to the side. The girl slips away, out of sight.

“Some sister, huh,” Fjord says, and Beau just grimaces through the pain in her spine.

“She thinks she’s too cool to hang around with me,” Beau forces out another unnatural laugh, “Kids, am I right?”

“Right.” Fjord huffs out a laugh, “Well, you tell your sister to give her name to the lady in front of the entrance, and she’ll point you in the right direction.”

“Sure,” Beau nods and ducks away back into the crowd, “Thanks.” She doesn’t turn back but she feels a watchful gaze on her as she walks away. In the short time they’ve been talking, the crowd’s thinned somewhat, and the woman with the clipboard is looking right at her.

Beau moves to the left. The woman’s eyes follow her. She smiles, and waves, and Beau knows she’s caught. Like a fish caught on a line, Beau cuts through the remaining stragglers, right up to the main entrance.

“Big guy sent me here to sign in,” Beau says, not yet resigned to her fate, but going along with it for the time being. Until she has a plan.

The woman is young looking, a few wrinkles around the eyes. Her hair is plastered to her face, a few shades darker orange than it would be dry. She has a kind face. It won’t look like that for long, not by the winter holidays for sure. This is the last face Beau is going to see before she gets sent home within two months and she is going to look _mad_.

“You must be Beauregard?” The woman asks, peering at her clipboard and then back at Beau, waiting for her to nod. She does, eventually.

“Beau,” she says, and crosses her arms.

“Beau,” the woman repeats, and smiles, “My name is Keyleth, I’ll be teaching you this year. I spoke to your dad on the phone.”

“Cool,” Beau says, and it takes a lot to not kick the gravel, not give in to those childish stereotypes. She’s much too grown up for that. She’s over it.

“You’ll be in Blue,” Keyleth drops her eyes to the soaked clipboard where one slightly chipped fingernail holds her place on a mostly crossed off list (and did the big guy say something about Blue house?), “And you’ll be rooming with… Oh! Jester Lavorre.”

“I don’t know her,” Beau says, and she watches for that familiar exasperated look of a nice person trying their best against all odds. Oh – there it is.

“You don’t, no. But I’ve taught her for a long time, she’s very lovely. And I’m sure you’d rather she tells you all about school than me!” Keyleth points, past the doorway into the reception, “If you pick up a map from the desk, you can make your way to your house’s dorm, and the house leaders are always around to help, it doesn’t matter what house.” She pauses for breath with a distracted, almost bewildered expression, “They have little badges. The house leaders.”

Beau stares for a moment too long, and in casting around for something to look at that’s not Keyleth’s kind, expectant face, she lands on the umbrella. Keeping her arms folded, she points at it with her foot. “Why aren’t you using that?”

Keyleth shakes it by the handle and the metal poles all swing around wildly, spilling out water and fraying blue material. “It broke.” She’s still smiling. Beau isn’t. That’s enough.

“Thanks,” Beau says, and she makes her way inside, out of the rain. Her suitcase smacks across the back of her ankles as she hauls it up the stairs, and she just knows there’ll be mud streaked there, mud and bruises. And she hopes her teacher isn’t watching.

“Here, I’ll help you!” A hand closes around the handle, next to hers, and Beau snatches it away.

“I’m fine,” she says, finally resting the suitcase down on the floor, and by her side is a blue tiefling girl, the one she’d seen being hugged so many times by the fancy lady in furs. She doesn’t seem hurt by Beau’s dismissal – instead she’s beaming, waving enthusiastically.

“I’m Jester!” She says, and two words have never struck more fear into Beau’s heart, “I’m your roommate! I can show you where our room is, and where our classes are-” she’s listing off on her fingers, and Beau checks the exits, considers sidling away but that’s just straight-up _mean_ , “-and we’ll have lots and lots of fun together. You’re Beau, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Beau says, and the way everyone seems to know her name is making her skin crawl.

“My mama had to go already so it’s just us,” Jester says, unprompted, and she takes up the handle of a dainty but still somehow robust pink suitcase, “But we’ll still have lots of fun! Come on, this way-” And she’s going, trotting down the hallway, and Beau has to almost jog to catch up to her. She’s tiny, but it certainly hasn’t impacted her speed.

“Is that all you have?” Beau calls out after her, unwieldy case thundering after her like it’s chasing her down. Her skirt looks like it could fill that suitcase alone.

“No, mama had most of my stuff sent up already,” Jester says, looking over her shoulder for just a split second before charging off again. She’s certainly not new to this, taking Beau down so many identical-looking halls and staircases so confidently it seems that her feet must just know the way by muscle memory. For a few minutes, Beau tries to memorise the path, but it may as well be a maze. She didn’t even pick up a map. Should have listened to Keyleth.

Jester stops in front of a large wooden door, so suddenly that Beau has a hard time stopping her case and it bashes into her ankles again. Shouldn’t have worn trousers that leave them so exposed. But they’re comfy and they look so _good_.

“Here we are!” Jester says, and she pushes the heavy-looking door open with one hand, no problem. Before it falls shut, Beau slips in behind her, and finds herself in a cosy little room with a few people already in it. By Jester’s bubbly personality, Beau might have guessed she’d have a huge crowd of adoring fans waiting for her, but no one really turns around. No one’s really talking, either, just looking through their luggage and drying clothes on the radiator and the backs of some very impressive armchairs and off a door handle.

“It’s not really much of a party here,” Jester whispers behind the back of her hand, “I think everyone’s gone to bed already.”

“Uh huh,” Beau says, and bed sounds good, sounds _really_ good, “Where’s the party at, then?”

Jester grabs Beau’s hand, barely grazing her fingertips but holding on with an iron grip all the same, and she pulls her forwards, “Our room’s this way!”

It’s easier to be dragged than to fight, and another hallway later Beau is standing in front of the room she’ll be staying in for as short a time as possible.

“Welcome to the fun zone,” Jester says, digging around for a key in the depths of her coat pockets. It’s a wonder it could ever be lost – when Jester pulls it out it’s weighed back down by a cluster of charms. Some are little beaded things, some clunky and wooden, a few twisted lengths of plastic string. They all click and clank together. It’s very _Jester_.

The key goes in the lock, turns, opens. And the room is almost as shitty as Beau expected it to be. White walls, smeared with damp in the corner. It’s not as small as she thought it might have been. It’s smells weird. There’s a window. A decently sized wardrobe. A too-low bed. Two of them, one on each side of the room. One is covered in a pink patchwork bedspread, and endless pillows, and soft toys, and there’s a daintily wrapped present sitting right in the middle. And the other is a bare mattress.

“Mama!” Jester squeals, and she dives on the box, but something seems to hold her back. She turns, looking at Beau, standing in the doorway with her suitcase. “Wait there. I’ve got something for you.” There’s a twinkle in her eye, a certain kind of brightness that isn’t dimmed while she dives under her bed, rummaging around for something.

“That’s fine, I don’t need anything,” Beau says, but she does nothing more, just stands watching while Jester drags out another pink suitcase and takes a box out, holding it out for Beau to take. After a second, she does. “What’s this?”

“It’s a present,” Jester says, “I thought you might be missing your home if this is the first time you’ve been away, and presents are nice.”

The box isn’t wrapped, but it isn’t small, and it takes two hands to comfortably hold. It’s not too heavy, but not exactly light, either.

Jester is watching so carefully Beau can almost feel it. “You can open it later, if you like.”

“Yeah,” Beau says, and she sets it down carefully on the bed. “Um. Thanks.” It’s easier to say with her back turned.

“It’s no problem!”

Beau shrugs the rucksack off her shoulders, and she feels an inch taller immediately, spine stretching out after being compressed for so long. She leans forwards, rolling her shoulders over and over until something clicks. Then she kicks her rucksack under the bed. Her suitcase follows. She won’t fit under the bed and she’d look stupid anyway so she lies on top of it instead, curled slightly like a comma around Jester’s gift, hands hooked around the other’s elbow above her head.

“Did your mom not send a blanket with you?” Jester asks, and when Beau turns to face her she’s peering back from under her fringe, head bent from where she’d been looking through her own gift box.

If Beau could shrug in this position she would, “No.”

“Oh,” Jester said, and she looks devastated on Beau's behalf, “My mama sent me an extra one, you can borrow it if you like. Yours must not have known.”

“Yeah,” Beau says, “Thanks.” She looks at the ceiling. It’s white, but not evenly white. There are splotches of grey and cream and other, less savoury colours. She closes her eyes.

“I’m gonna go downstairs for a bit,” Jester says, “Go and see some people. Are you coming?”

“I don’t think so,” Beau says. She’s melting into the mattress. It’s horrible and lumpy. She couldn’t move if she tried.

“Um,” Jester says from somewhere closer to Beau’s head, somewhere closer to the door, “That’s okay. Do you want me to turn the light off for you?”

“I don’t mind.”

 _Click_. Everything goes dark.

“I’ll be back real soon,” Jester says, and when she opens the door it squeaks, and when she closes it, it creaks.

Beau hasn’t taken any of her makeup off. Her face itches. She doesn’t know where the bathroom is, so when she brushes her teeth she swallows the toothpaste. A little bit of toothpaste never did any harm, especially washed down with the last of her water bottle from the trip. Beau does her stretches in the dark, rain pattering on the window, and when Jester comes back she pretends to be asleep, faking it and faking it until the day’s exhaustion and the quiet rhythm of the rain and something soft and warm being tucked over her puts her to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

At home, Beau is an early riser, but this isn’t home and she wakes up just past noon to find Jester looming over her.

“Good afternoon!” Jester pushes something into Beau’s open hand, something soft and food-shaped and difficult to look at a second after waking up, “I saved some breakfast for you!”

“Thanks,” Beau says, and she squints to find a slightly flattened blueberry muffin resting on her palm. She takes a hesitant bite. It’s dense, and the blueberries are chewy. “You didn’t have to.”

Jester turns around quickly, facing her own side of the room, “Well, you can starve if you want to. The dining hall closed already.”

“Jester, I-” Beau hesitates, not sure which words should come next. This kind of coldness is as unexpected as it is familiar. While she searches for the right thing to say, Jester turns her head, peeking back at her. 

“I’m kidding,” Jester says, and she faces the wall again, “Get dressed! You need to go and get your timetable. I got mine already.” She snatches up a piece of paper from the desk, a grid already highlighted in bright colours and glitter glue, and waves it around.

After taking a sniff of the shirt she’d worn last night, Beau decides not to change it – no one really saw it yesterday, after all. May as well be new. She throws off the blanket and shoves her bare feet straight into shoes, tucking the laces into the sides. Her hair goes up in a lopsided bun.

“Where’s the bathroom?” Beau asks, aware now that she doesn’t know a thing about this place. If she’s going to get out of this place, she needs to do it herself. No more getting leftover breakfast from mystery girls.

“Down the hall,” Jester says, and she peeks round again, turning fully when she realises Beau’s dressed, “Past Fjord’s room.”

“Fjord?” Beau asks, and she doesn’t miss the look in Jester’s eye, the off-to-the-side glance and the quirk of her mouth.

“Uh-huh,” Jester nods, “He’s our house leader. He’s really nice.”

“Really nice, huh?” Beau says, and she reaches for her wash bag and the coat she’d left on the floor the night before. It’s dry now, mostly.

“Mm-hmm,” Jester’s brimming with the kind of energy that means she wants to be asked more questions, but Beau’s not about to ask. She’s not interested in that. She’s more interested in the bathroom.

It’s not hard to find. One side of the corridor leads back to the common room, and the other leads to the bathroom, past at least a dozen more bedroom doors. The second to last door, the one next to the bathroom, is spaced out further than the others. It might be bigger, but there’s no way Beau would sleep next to the bathroom like that.

Inside, the bathroom is in a turn-of-the-century style, all black and white tiles and wall sconces, a row of shower cubicles on one side and a row of toilets on the other. Sinks line the third wall, a light over each one. Some work, some don’t. Over the furthest shower, the light is broken completely, and there’s a yellow wet floor sign in the middle of the room as if to make up for the slow-moving stream of soapy water making its way from the showers to the drain.

Apart from Beau, there’s only one other person in the room. They don’t seem to acknowledge her at all. She keeps her head down, ducking into a stall and locking the door until well after she hears the sound of the bathroom door open and close. Not that Beau’s shy, or scared, but she just doesn’t have the energy. Five minutes of Jester was already enough. When she opens the door again, it’s empty, and Beau brushes her teeth at the sink. Despite being pretty much summer, the water is freezing, but it tastes okay even as it’s numbing Beau’s teeth.

Looking in the mirror is a familiar mistake. Yesterday’s makeup is smeared across her face (is it yesterday’s or the day before’s?) and it hardly budges when she splashes water on it. One eye is ringed with the green remains of a bruise. It doesn’t hurt anymore when she pokes it. Her hair isn’t that greasy. She scratches at a few strands of hair until they pull out of her bun, hanging in her eyes. That’s better. She takes a step back, reassesses.

She could do better, but she’ll start as she means to go on.

By the time she gets back to her room, Jester is already gone, and so is Beau as soon as she’s tossed her wash bag onto the bed. Through the common room she can feel the eyes on her. She keeps walking through, head up, eyes straight ahead. Once she gets out, she’s directionless, but Beau’s been lost before. It’s not really a case of being lost. Every path ends up somewhere.

Inside the manor, it seems somehow bigger than it did yesterday on the outside. Some doors she’s sure she passes through twice, the way the corridors seem to repeat themselves, but after a while the décor becomes more modern, more familiar. It becomes more modern still, from the ancient, yellowing paintings that line the walls outside Beau’s dormitory to the cheery blue-framed corkboards she stands in front of now.

Half of one board is missing, taken down before the start of term. The other half is covered in names and faces. Staff members. Beau follows the pictures down until she finds the one familiar one. Orange hair, but much longer, and a smoother face, still kind. It’s the same picture she’d seen on her parents’ computer. None of the staff have a last name attached and it’s that kind of forced familiarity that squeezes Beau out of her comfort zone.

Following the corridor, other boards are empty but some still have old work pinned to them, with brightly coloured banners at the top proclaiming things like What’s In The Magic Box? and Fire Safety and This Week’s Art Star Pupils. And there’s a trophy cabinet, filled with photos, with last year’s sports’ day winners in pride of place at the top next to a yellow-ribboned cup. Beau stops and crouches, following the photos all the way down, twenty or so years’ worth of pictures.

And then she moves on, because competitive sports suck and group sports suck too. The only way she’ll be earning a trophy here is by herself, and she won’t be doing that, because it’s not something she’s about to waste her time on. Like she’s wasting it on finding where to pick up a timetable.

Yesterday, Jester had taken her up the stairs, so down the stairs she goes, down and down and across until the corridor widens out into the reception. It’s a room designed to be boring. The carpet is brown. The receptionist is young and old-looking all at once, and she spins back and forth slightly on her chair, reading a newspaper between slotting pieces of paperwork into a shredder.

“Excuse me,” Beau says once she’s standing close enough to the desk to slap her hands on it a couple of times, “I’d like a timetable.”

The receptionist looks up slowly over the rim of her tortoiseshell-framed glasses, eyebrows raised, “Who are you?” At last, someone who doesn’t know Beau on sight. She pulls a folder out from under the desk and smacks it down on the side of the desk, flipping it open to a long list of names. Beau stands on her tiptoes and leans over, turns the page from under the receptionist’s hand. She scans down it with one finger, and stops at her name.

“There,” she points.

“Beauregard,” the receptionist repeats, with murky intention. She closes the folder and slides open a drawer, sorting through an endless row of plastic tabs.

“That’s my name,” Beau says, leaning over further to see what’s happening, “Don’t wear it out.”

The receptionist scoffs and pulls out a piece of paper, finally, that resembles the one Jester had waved at her not too long ago. Before Beau can grab it, the receptionist snatches her hand back. “You need to sign.”

Another paper, equally as long as the list of names but not quite the same list, and Beau scrawls her signature next to her name. The timetable is handed over. “Thanks.”

The receptionist puts her head back down, and she ruffles the pages of the newspaper together. The picture on the front is of a man clutching at a hefty armful of vegetables. The receptionist ruffles her paper again. “Good harvest, this year.”

Beau walks away to the sound of the shredder. She sees no reason to go back the way she’d came – after all, this place is so much bigger than it had seemed, and nothing’s going to be accomplished by sitting around in her room. She folds her timetable exactly in half and stuffs it in her pocket.

It seems that there are three ways to go. There are signs, this close to the reception, and her choices are split up into classrooms, the dining hall, and the dormitories. And, unsignposted, is the door from the reception leading to outside. Beau’s stomach rumbles, unhappy with her offering of one squashed blueberry muffin. Dining hall it is, then.

Earlier, Jester had said that the dining hall was closed, but the door isn’t locked – it’s just the kitchen that’s closed. It has that classic school dining hall smell. Plastic and old food and more plastic. Right at the other side of the hall is a metal shutter, pulled down low. This room is decked out with its fair share of corkboards, too. Once has that same list of staff names. Another has Our Values, but Beau doesn’t even bother to read it just so that she can hate on it.

There’s no food here. At the door, she cracks it open, but lets it fall shut when she hears voices on the other side. She steps back, close to the wall, ear close to the door, but she can’t make out words. Only that the voices are getting louder, and louder, and then the door opens and she’s yanked out by the front of her coat.

“That’s her,” someone crows from the back of the group, “That’s the new kid!”

“Fuck off,” Beau snaps, and she kicks out at a leg, missing by an inch. The hand in her coat tightens, pulls her close, shoves her back. As she hits and slides off the wall she gets a look at face above her, an older face, a girl with a backpack slung over one shoulder and a nasty glint in her eyes. Beau hits the floor, twisting her arm underneath herself as she tries to break her fall. She scrambles to her feet, breathing hard through her nose.

“Oh, she’s gonna fight you,” someone else jeers. There are four of them, all older, three of them taller, and they start to push in on Beau, crowding her against the wall.

The girl who’d grabbed Beau in the first place reaches out again, takes her by the chin and angles her into the light. “She’s been fighting already. Haven’t you?”

Beau wrenches herself away, smacking down the girl’s arm. It falls away easily. “Leave me alone,” she mumbles, and she can’t deny that some part of her, that red-hot molten rock part right in the centre, isn’t willing to swing a fist right now. Isn’t ready for it.

“We’re just talking,” the girl says, “Anything wrong with just talking?”

Beau’s full height isn’t very impressive, but she brings herself up to it anyway. The girl laughs, and throws her arm out to the side, slinging her bag to the other side of the corridor where it slumps against the wall. The whole group seems to laugh, closing in again, and then they freeze as the girl in front looks off to the side-

Coming up the corridor is a tall boy. His head is shaved, close to the scalp. He’s wearing a badge. Not a blue one like Fjord’s, a yellow one. Everyone takes a collective step back from Beau.

“What did I say?” He asks, not giving Beau even a glance, and while they’re distracted she takes the opportunity to duck away, planting an elbow firmly into the girl’s side and running for it, running and running and running until she can’t hear the shouting anymore.

She never read the Our Values board, but she’s fairly sure that none of that is written on there. And in hindsight, she should have let that girl beat the shit out of her. Should have given her all she’d got back, too. Really piss off her parents by needing to be picked up the day after being dropped off.

Somehow, her mad dash led her right back to the start. The dorm is almost familiar, at least more familiar than everything else, and she lets herself in. Heads turn in the common room again.

“What are you looking at?” She says, and some people avert their gazes, some look even harder. It doesn’t matter.

The bedroom is still blessedly empty. Beau sits on the lumpy mattress. The adrenaline is wearing off, and her arm hurts, throbbing in time with her heartbeat. She twists it, carefully, rolls her hand around one way and then the other. It’s not too sore, not like when she broke it, and it’s probably just a pulled muscle from when she landed on the floor.

Jester’s present is still on the bed. It’s wrapped nicely, pretty floral paper and neat corners, taped evenly if excessively on both sides. Fingernails too short to do more than just scrabble at the raised edge of the tape, Beau roots around in her bag for her scissors. Handle grasped in one hand, she turns the present around until she finds an opening large enough to slot the blade into. One push with just the right amount of pressure, and the scissors slice right through the paper in one clean cut.

One side open, it’s easy enough to tip it up and let the box inside slip out and fall onto the bed, upside down. Turned over, Beau finds herself holding a box of perfume. She’s not too familiar with the stuff – her mum’s a fan – but it looks classy and probably not intended for women. That’s fine. That’s perfect. Beau picks up the rest of the paper, and something else slips out. It’s a necklace, a long piece of string with beads and a green pendant dangling off it. Jewellery’s not Beau’s thing either, but she’s got an eye for the good stuff. This isn’t it. This is craft store stuff. The pendant isn’t really her colour, but at least that might have been expensive, or repurposed from something else. Clearly Jester put this together herself.

That might be worth something. Emotionally. Beau puts the perfume box and the necklace inside her bedside table, and shuts the door.


	3. Chapter 3

“You’ve only been here two nights”, the little blue tiefling says as Beau’s poised in the doorway, silhouetted against the light of the corridor.

“So?”

“So you don’t have any friends yet!” Jester says, and she scoots her feet off the bed, straight into a pair of lovely brown leather boots, and she rifles through her wardrobe for a coat. Once it’s on, a puffy green thing, she looks like a tiny fat bird with tiny legs poking out of the bottom. Beau just stands there in amazement. “Come on, let’s go.”

She leads Beau out into the hallway, completely conspicuous in her oversized coat, and every time they pass another person she doesn’t waste time informing them that she’s showing the new girl to the bathroom. No, not that bathroom; the good bathroom. Beau shrinks behind her, as much as the height difference will allow. Most of the teachers seem to be missing this soon after dinner, probably still eating, but as one comes past Jester shoves them both behind a curtain into an alcove.

“Don’t make a sound,” she whispers, taking baby steps backwards, and Beau has to move back to avoid getting stomped by Jester’s little heels.

“Wasn’t planning to,” Beau mutters, and Jester lets out the barest hint of a giggle. Footsteps move past them – going, going, gone. But Jester keeps moving backwards, pushing Beau back further than the wall had seemed to allow.

“Mind the step,” Jester says, and Beau hesitates, one foot hovering over the space where the floor should have been. Carefully, she turns, and spread out before her is a long, spiral staircase. Jester squeezes past her and dashes down the stairs, hair flying out behind her as she runs, boots tapping on the steps all the way down. Beau follows more cautiously, one hand against the stone wall until near the bottom of the staircase, where it becomes too cold to touch comfortably. She puts her fingers in her pocket, wriggling them against the soft material until they’re warm again.

“Where is this?” Beau asks. They’ve stopped at a large stone door. It’s completely smooth all over, no handles, nothing except for a carved face of an old bearded man in the centre. Jester looks over one shoulder and gives her a wink, before leaning in and whispering something in the man’s ear. From here, Beau can’t quite make out the words, but it doesn’t exactly sound Common. And then, for a split second, Beau could swear the man smiles, but she can’t tell before the door swings open, grating against the floor. Jester stands in the open doorway with her arms spread wide, a breeze from the opening of the door ruffling her hair.

“Ta-da!” She says, spinning around with her arms still spread, “It’s the crypt!”

“The crypt,” Beau repeats flatly, looking beyond Jester to the long, dark corridor ahead of them. From here, it’s difficult to see, but as she follows Jester down the passageway it becomes clearer. Lining the walls are dozens of oblong shapes, roughly the length of a person, and each one has a stone plaque engraved in almost illegible script. More clearly written underneath each one is a date. Two dates. The one closest to Beau is almost seven hundred years old, if she’s counting correctly.

Behind them, the room goes dark as the door grinds shut. They stand for a moment or two in the darkness, and as Beau peers at the door for any sign of an opening she struggles to find words that don’t feel awkward in her mouth. And then there is light – Jester’s illuminated by a flame from a red lighter, cupped safely in her palm.

“Creepy, right?” Jester says, orange twinkles in her eyes. “Follow me.” The exit is shut. Jester looks thrilled. As if she has a choice, Beau follows her.

Eventually, the passage leads out into a large, round chamber. The edges of the room are made up of pillars, the top of each one arching into the next. Beau can only presume that each archway leads to another passage full of stacked-up caskets. Spread out in front of them is a circle of large tombs, mostly plain but becoming more ostentatious towards the middle of the circle. In the dim light, the details are hazy and the shapes blend into each other, difficult to decipher. Some of the nearer ones are easier to see, and Beau wanders further from Jester’s light to see more closely. From here, Beau can see that the lid had been pushed off at some point, and then put haphazardly back on in almost the right place.

“Do you come here often?” Beau asks, cringing inwardly as she moves over to the next tomb. This one has fared little better, and half the lid is broken off entirely. Inside is empty, nothing but dust and shards of stone.

“Sometimes,” Jester says, voice echoing across the chamber, but quiet as she moves away towards a looming statue in the very centre of the room. The light disappears with her, a glowing sphere travelling along until it lights up the statue – or what remains of it. She hadn’t been able to see before, but now, in the light, it’s clear that the statue had once been much taller. Now it stands in ruin, broken off somewhere around the stomach, the top of the torso and arms and head lying in scattered fragments around Jester’s feet as she perches on the statue’s plinth. “I like to sit here.”

“By yourself?” Beau asks, and as she speaks it’s as though her breath blows out the lighter, even from back here. Darkness falls on the room like a shroud. With it comes a chill, heavy and damp, that settles on Beau’s bare arms. Her hair stands on end. Something is behind her, something’s watching her, she knows, she can feel it. “Jester?” Her voice sounds muffled, even so close.

Something clicks on the stone floor. Not too heavy, not too light, and behind her, clicking again. And again. Closer and closer still. Beau tenses, her fingers clenching into solid fists, and she turns to face the source of the sound. She can see nothing, nothing at all in the darkness, until she can pick out two pieces of light like shiny blue coins, coming closer. That’s all. The air is stuffy, stale, it clogs up her lungs.

“Jester,” she says again, and her voice wobbles across the room. A flash of movement catches the corner of her eye, a rush of dark material sweeping past a derelict tomb, and Beau swings round to try and grab at it. She’s too far away. Something heavy claps her on the shoulders and the weight is so unexpected that she stumbles backwards, falls on her ass, and whatever (whoever) grabbed her falls right on top, knocking the wind from her lungs.

A final click, and Jester’s lighter springs back to life, blinding Beau for a few seconds. Jester’s sat firmly on her stomach, giggling behind her hand even as Beau’s gasping for breath.

“What the fuck-” Beau says eventually, once her heart rate is somewhere under dangerous, and Jester leans to the side and tips off her, lying on one side on the floor. Beau closes her eyes.

“Your face-” Jester says between bouts of laughter, and when Beau dares to look at her again she looks both older and younger than she did before. Beau’s not about to underestimate her again, that’s for sure. This is a girl not to fuck with.

“Right, right,” Beau rolls onto her side and shoves herself upright, dusting off her trousers. They’re covered in ancient dead people grime. Her ass hurts. “So you brought me down here to kill me, that’s it.”

“I’m just having fun,” Jester says brightly, and she gets up, straightening out the sliver of skirt that peeps out from beneath her coat. “We can go now.”

“That’d be great,” Beau says, and she lets Jester lead her back through the original catacomb, keeping closer than maybe she did on the way in, leaving the broken statue far behind them. Even though its face is gone, Beau has the prickling feeling of being watched. On the other side of the door, the air is so fresh, so much different to that suffocating stale stuff in the chamber. The whole experience was so at odds with this girl in front of her, all bubbly and bright in such a gross, deeply haunted place. And that’s kinda cool. Kinda really cool. Not something to try again in a hurry, though.

The watching feeling lasts long after the door closes. It’s a feeling Beau’s familiar with, as if someone’s always looking over her shoulder, and it fades into the background with time. The time it takes to get back to their bedroom, in fact. Jester appears completely unfazed, and she’s smiling gently to herself.

Beau looks at her as she hangs up her coat. “Jester, can you see in the dark?”

“Of course!” Jester says brightly, and Beau slaps her palm against the light switch.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” She holds up her whole left hand.

“Four,” says Jester, and this time Beau can see those shiny blue circles and makes the connection between them and Jester’s eyes, reflecting the same way cats’ do in the dark, “And one thumb.”

Beau turns the light back on, more gently this time. Jester’s looking at her with an expectant expression, a wide grin on her face that falls very slowly as she realizes that Beau isn’t smiling.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Jester says, still with a hint of laughter but it’s more nervous this time, more forced, “I’m sorry. I just thought it would be fun.”

It takes a second for Beau to realise that the undertone in her voice is sadness, and that realisation brings with it a sort of infectious unhappiness that crawls around in Beau’s gut and makes her upset, too. Like a kind of virus. She pulls up the muscles of her mouth. “It’s cool,” she says, “Yeah, it was pretty fun.”

Jester’s face cheers up immediately, bouncing back like an elastic band, “Oh, really?”

“Yeah,” Beau says, and she drops her own smile, that grimace of a thing. At least she knows about the crypt now. Who knows where those other passageways lead? If anyone knows, it’s probably Jester.

“I can make it up to you,” Jester says, bounding up to Beau just as she’s turning away, tugging on her arm, “There’s a party tonight! One of my friends in the sixth form has a birthday party every year and it’s tonight and I was going to go by myself again but I’m sure you can come!”

“One of your friends?”

“Molly’s _everybody’s_ friend,” Jester says, tugging again on Beau arm, “Please come, it’s gonna be _so cool_.”

“Thanks, but I don’t really know anyone,” Beau says, and before she can pull her arm out of Jester’s grasp she squeezes tightly.

“I said earlier, you don’t have any friends yet! You can meet people before you start classes so you can sit next to people and it won’t be weird!” Jester’s always been a little intense, but this is a _lot_. It’s probably less effort to go than to fight her. And Beau hadn’t really considered the act of trying to find someone to sit next to. She figured she’d sit next to whoever talked the least. But hey, if she goes to this party then maybe she can scope out the quiet ones beforehand.

“Fine,” Beau says, finally wriggling her arm away, “But I don’t have anything to wear.”

Jester gasps and claps her hands together, clasping them together over her heart with an expression that’s somehow both horrified and dreamy, “Nothing to wear?”

“You’re not giving me a makeover,” Beau warns, and Jester doesn’t seem to notice, ripping open the doors of Beau’s wardrobe to reveal the crumpled pile of clothes at the bottom.

“This is hideous,” Jester says, and she squats down to start rifling through, throwing things into piles that seem to have no real significance, “You don’t have many clothes.”

“I don’t need that many,” Beau shrugs. She’s worn the same outfit since she’d arrived. It still _looks_ clean, and that’s what matters.

“Neither do I, but I like to dress up,” Jester says, holding up a piece of cloth and rearranging it until it looks halfway like a shirt, “You can borrow something of mine.”

“That’s okay, I don’t really like-” she tries to think of a word that sums up what Jester’s wearing without sounding like she’s trying to be mean, “-cute stuff.”

“I love cute stuff,” Jester says, and she holds up a blue striped shirt that’s had the sleeves hacked off at some point in its life, “What did you do to this?”

“I made it look good,” Beau says, and she snatches the shirt away, balling it up and throwing it back into the dark recesses of the wardrobe. Jester shrugs and looks away, digging through a pile that might be the “passable” pile by the way she doesn’t look completely disgusted by it.

“You could wear this,” she says, holding up another shredded t-shirt (this time yellow and cut off at the waist, not just the shoulders) and tossing it in Beau’s direction. “And trousers. Not jeans. And your jacket.”

“Why not jeans?”

Jester pulls a face, “Double denim.”

Beau shrugs, but she’s got to admit it’s not a bad outfit. It’s not the best, but it’s put together. Nothing like Jester’s, who’s clearly put thought into making every shade of pink she’s wearing match each other. And double denim is hardly outdated – not that it matters. Jester passes her a pair of stretchy belted trousers and she’s good to go, changing quickly while Jester’s back’s turned.

“That’s pretty good,” Jester says when she turns back around, Beau holding her arms out for inspection. “Where’s your present?”

“My what?”

“Your present,” Jester says again, and when Beau still doesn’t respond she makes a box shape with her hands, and mimes opening it.

“Oh,” Beau says, and she takes the perfume box and the necklace out of her cabinet. She hadn’t looked at them since she put them in there.

“Great,” Jester takes them both, and pops the top off the perfume bottle, spraying it twice up high into the air between them. It smells sweet and slightly musky and not like the picture on the bottle. She seems to anticipate Beau doing something here, but after almost a second of waiting she takes Beau’s hand and pulls her forwards through the mist, tiny droplets falling on her face. Beau blinks hard to keep it from going in her eyes, and up close she can see Jester scrutinizing her. Her breath smells like the perfume – too sweet.

“I’m not sure this is very _you_ ,” she finally concedes. “But the best gifts are ones that you would want, too.”

“It’s the thought that counts,” Beau says, and while they’re so close together Jester takes the opportunity to hook the necklace over Beau’s head. The pendant thunks against her breastbone.

“It goes with your shirt,” Jester says, so obviously pleased with herself, and Beau doesn’t tend to wear jewelry but this is so un-girly and so obviously handmade that it kind of suits her. And it does match her shirt.

“Thanks,” Beau says quietly, and she takes a step back, hitting her legs against the bed, “What are you wearing?”

Jester practically buzzes with excitement, “You’ll have to wait and see!”

“Cool,” Beau says, and Jester shoos her away with her hands, flapping them towards the door.

“No, you have to wait in the common room!” She says, and Beau begrudgingly obliges. Out in the corridor, once the door’s shut behind her, there’s nothing better to do than what Jester says, despite how much she doesn’t want to do that. Socialising at home had always been forced, dressed up in starchy outfits and presented in front of a crowd of old and rich people for questioning, but at least here she can leave when she likes. And the people here might be rich, if Jester’s anything to go by, but they’re certainly not old.

That might be worse.

The common room is as full as it ever is, which is to say not at all. A few people are sitting in chairs, and one person is stretched out across the floor in front of the unlit fireplace. The radio is on, an old-fashioned beige one, but the sound of low-volume cheesy pop is drowned out by the ticking of a grandfather clock. It looks mystical, as though sitting under it at a minute to midnight would lead to having fantastical adventures.

There’s only one person in the room that Beau recognises, and that’s Fjord. He’s sat reading in the biggest armchair, so comfortable that Beau’s sure he’s been there a while – she’d seen him on the way in. She hasn’t spoken to him since that first night, but he sees plenty of people in a day. And he’s slept since then. There’s no way he’ll remember who she is. She’s walks around to the side of the chair, not in his direct line of sight but close enough.

“Hey,” she says, “Fjord.”

“Hey,” he says, and he looks up from his book, “How’s your sister?”

All Beau’s blood goes straight to her face. She scuffs her shoe against the floor, “Oh, she’s, uh. Doing fine.”

“That’s great,” Fjord says, shutting his book and shifting in his seat to face Beau, and she knows she’s got to make this conversation worth it now.

“Yeah,” she says, and gestures towards the book, blurb side up, “What are you reading, there?”

Fjord flips the cover over for a split second, just long enough for Beau to make out the image of a scantily-clad elf lady on the front cover. “Oh,” he says, “Just something Jester lent to me. I’m not really reading it, you know? You’re rooming with Jester this year, aren’t you?”

Beau doesn’t miss how quickly Fjord’s changing the conversation but she lets it slide, “Yeah, that’s the one.”

“Getting on okay?” He asks, and he shoves the book down between the armrest and his leg, “Did you get your timetable alright?”

“Sure did,” Beau says, “Did Jester tell you?”

“Tell me what?” Fjord says, and his expression is so blank that she knows he doesn’t have a single clue what’s going on. He’s a pretty boy with nothing but dust between his ears, and that must be why Jester likes him so much.

“Never mind,” she shakes her head, and she searches for something to keep the awkward silence at bay, “Are you going to Molly’s party tonight?”

“You know Molly?”

“Molly’s everybody’s friend,” Beau says, repeating what Jester had said earlier with enough confidence that she hopes Fjord buys it.

Fjord nods slowly, “That’s true. I don’t think I’m going, though. I’ve got class in the morning. Shouldn’t have organised a party the day before term, but that’s Molly for you.”

“I’ve got class, too.”

“I’ve got to set an example,” Fjord says, and he sighs, looking off over Beau’s shoulder. He shuffles, just enough that the light catches on his blue house leader badge. Not enough that it looks braggy, but Beau definitely notices.

The door opens and closes, and Beau turns around to see Jester come out wearing a sequined dress over a t-shirt, decked out in bangles up to her elbows. She has a little over-the-shoulder bag, covered in sparkles that absolutely spell out her name.

“I’m ready!” She says, and she throws herself forwards over the back of Fjord’s chair, looping her arms around his neck, “What do you think, you guys?”

“You look great,” Fjord says, and the same time Beau says, “Pretty cool.”

“Are you coming too, Fjord?” Jester says, right up in his ear, and he squirms away without looking annoyed at all.

“I-” he says, and he gives Beau a quick, furtive glance before going back to Jester, “I think I will. Just for a while.”

Beau raises one eyebrow at him the second he dares to look at her again; it’s all she needs to do. Jester doesn’t notice, tapping her feet excitedly, and she smacks at Fjord’s arm a few times.

“Let’s go, me and Beau are ready right now, you’ve got to come with us,” she says, and Fjord pulls a face.

“I’m not quite ready for a party,” he says, stretching out the bottom of his school-issue hoodie as if it could do the talking for him.

“I don’t care,” Jester says in a sing-song voice, and she moves to the other side of the chair, grabs Fjord’s hands and hauls him up to his feet. He doesn’t look half as shocked as Beau feels.

“Fine, alright, alright,” Fjord says, shaking his head with the corner of a smile on his face. “But if the kids make fun of me it’s your fault.”

Jester gasps and smacks him again with the back of her hand, “Fjord! You’re not that old! You look very handsome.” She gives him a push towards the door and turns back to Beau. “Let’s go, then.”

On the way down the corridor, Beau keeps behind Fjord and Jester, a good few paces behind. She doesn’t mean to, but the further they walk the more distance she finds between them. She keeps one eye on them, chatting happily between themselves, and the other on the corridor. Each turn is subtly different than the other – different paintings on the wall, a different class number, but otherwise they all look the same. It doesn’t take too long to pass the staircase to the crypt, and Beau wonders how she never noticed it before. It’s as though the house doesn’t want to be noticed. At least, not by her.

Soon after, everything is different for sure, taking a right turn where Beau’s always taken a left, and not long after that the halls become more populated. At first there are only a few extra students milling about, but the final stretch of the corridor is tightly packed. Clearly, the manor had been designed with less tenants in mind, and it’s a tight fit to squeeze all three of them through the crowd, although it’s easier when people start to step out of the way for Fjord. Whether it’s out of respect or because of his size, Beau can’t quite tell.

The Yellow common room is much the same as the Blue – or at least it would be if it were empty. Right now it’s more cramped than the corridor outside, and it’s hot and sweaty and _loud_. Like the corridor, it wasn’t meant for this many people, but no one seems to mind. Beau and Fjord mill around the entrance as Jester fishes around in her bag, pulling out another box, smaller than the one she’d given Beau but wrapped in shiny purple and gold paper.

“I’m gonna find Molly,” Jester says over the music, waving the gift.

Beau makes a show of patting down her pockets, “I didn’t bring anything.”

“That’s fine,” she says, and she hooks her arm round Fjord’s elbow, “Are you coming?”

Beau shakes her head, and Jester pouts, and Beau shakes her head again. Jester huffs and looks up at Fjord, who’s busy scanning the room, so much taller than everyone else. The crowd is like a living, breathing, creature, and when it moves again Jester and Fjord are gone. Swallowed up. Beau stands with her back against the wall, and she shoves her hands in her pockets.

The crowd opens its mouth again, and Beau has a direct line to the drinks table. She knows an invitation when she sees one. There’s just enough time to dart through before the path is gone, and Beau’s stuck here. That’s not a problem.

What is a problem is the question of what to drink. Most of the items on the table are shitty or empty. They arrived late, after all. Nothing’s very strong, either. In fact, most of it’s not alcohol at all, which is what she should have expected from some shitty schoolkid birthday party.

A hand – purple, well-manicured, ring-laden – reaches over Beau’s shoulder and dangles a bottle in front of her face.

“Here,” someone says behind her, and drops the bottle before she’s quite ready, but she catches it anyway. “You look like you’re having a bad time.” The person behind her laughs.

“Piss off,” Beau says, and she turns the bottle over to inspect a label that isn’t there. The cap’s on tight though, and when she manages to unscrew it, it turns out to have been unopened. It smells like liquorice. Tastes like it, too, until it evaporates in Beau’s throat and she can’t taste anything anymore. That’s the good shit.

The next thing to look for is a good corner to hide in. Not _hiding_ , not really. Just… watching. There aren’t many empty spaces in this room but the stairs are free, and, fire hazard or not, they’re always a good place to sit. She finds a seat about a quarter of the way up, high enough to see mostly over the crowd but not so high that she’s immediately noticeable.

And she takes another sip. And another, bigger this time. And some more, over at least half an hour. Maybe an hour, even, just watching. Jester’s disappeared completely by now, but sometimes the top of Fjord’s head peeks over everyone else’s. Even taller still is a girl, stony-faced, and she looks directly at Beau just as Beau’s looking at her. A spark of electricity runs down Beau’s spine, and she brings the bottle back to her mouth to break the eye contact. When she puts it back down, the girl’s walking straight towards her, cutting through the crowd like a hot knife through butter. She doesn’t even have to ask people to move; wherever she wants to be, that’s where people aren’t.

“Can I help you?” Beau says, and she hasn’t quite swallowed properly and there’s alcohol in her throat and it burns but she swallows hard and hopefully this girl doesn’t notice.

“Where did you get that?” The girl asks, gesturing to the bottle in Beau’s hand, and she has a quiet, unassuming voice, at odds with her imposing demeanor.

“Oh,” Beau says, and it’s now that whatever she’s drinking hits her. It’s been happening for a while, but it’s now that she notices. “This? You can- you can have this.”

The girl just looks at her, arms folded, but not menacingly. She looks solid, like a tree. “I don’t want it, thank you.”

“Why not?” Beau says, and maybe she should have drunk this more slowly, waited to see what it would do, “You look like… You’re having a bad time.”

“So do you,” the girl takes the bottle that Beau’s still holding unsteadily in front of her, and she squeezes between Beau and the stairs, sitting a step up from her, as if she isn’t tall enough already. Finished screwing the cap back onto the bottle, she swings it idly between her knees, looking intently out over the crowd.

“Are you gonna drink that?” Beau leans her head back against the step, and the ceiling above her rotates, orbiting the tall girl’s face like a star.

“No,” she says, and she seems to spot what she’s been looking for, getting to her feet with the bottle still grasped firmly in her hand. If Beau could focus on it, she could see that she’s emptied almost half of the bottle. She staggers upright. If it was wine, she could have finished it for sure.

“Wait-” Beau says, gripping the bannister, but the girl’s gone, saying something that Beau can’t make out over the music. And the bottle is gone, too.

Standing is a lot more difficult than sitting, and a tiny voice in the back of her brain says this is the drunkest she’s ever been. And she’s at some stupid party and the girls won’t speak to her because, oh, they’re cool. She thinks she sees a head of messy dark hair like the girl’s had been and she tries to make her way towards it but the crowd has a mind of its own, turning her around and around and finally spitting her back out at the door.

Time has certainly passed. She hadn’t been aware of it before, ruminating on the stairs, but the corridor has emptied out so much that it must be later. Jester’s probably gone. Fjord, too, but he’s not here. He’s only here for Jester, anyway. Beau looks down the corridor again. Empty. Inviting, if only because there’s a warm bed at the very end of it.

Keeping one hand running along the length of the wall, it seems like forever before she’s stopped by someone gripping her arm. She blinks, unsure of her surroundings. Nothing is familiar. Nothing here will ever be familiar, not like home – not home. That’s not home, and neither is this.

“ _What_ ,” she says, trying to free her arm but having no luck, just tipping herself further and further over until she’s almost slumped against the wall. Attached to her is the same purple hand from earlier, although this time it resolves itself into a fully-formed person.

“Party’s that way,” he says, jerking his thumb back down the corridor. He’s smiling, but his eyes are frowning. “And I think your friends are looking for you.”

“Don’t have any friends,” Beau mumbles, and this time when she tugs her arm back she breaks free, stumbling back as she does.

“Well, I can leave you here, but there’s people worried about you,” he crosses his arms loosely across his chest, and Beau mirrors him as best as she can.

“There aren’t.”

“Suit yourself,” he says, turning with a detached wave of his hand, but something stops him at the last second. He turns back, past Beau, towards the far end of the hallway. And he mumbles to himself, “Fuck.”

“Fuck,” Beau nods.

Three people are walking towards them, where there were no people before. One short girl with short hair and a scowl, one taller boy with brown hair and a somewhat blank look on his face, and, front and centre, the tall bald boy with the yellow badge. He’s the only one Beau recognises. And he’d helped her before, hadn’t he?

But you can’t trust anyone. Especially not the people in charge.

“Tealeaf,” the tall boy says, a word that makes no sense (a code word? Beau muses on it as she slips down the wall), “Good party tonight?”

“Better than ever,” the purple boy says, and Beau’s vaguely aware that he’s trying to step in front of her. Whatever she’s drunk is starting to churn in her stomach, turning it into sour acid. “Did you lose your invite, Lorenzo?”

“No,” Lorenzo says, and it’s a name that suits him, somehow. His eyes slip over to Beau, but she knows this isn’t the first time he’s seeing her. Just the first time he’s bothered to look at her. Running away last night, she hadn’t had time for a good look, but stuck to the wall like a bug against flypaper now she can see him, and she’s almost scared. Almost. He’s a big guy, but Beau’s fought bigger. There’s something to him, though, that she can’t put her finger on.

“What’s up,” Beau says, and instantly wishes the ground would swallow her up whole.

“You’d better stay away from that one,” Lorenzo gives Beau a nod, “He’s trouble.”

“Well,” Beau says, “So am I.”

Lorenzo takes a few steps forwards and so does his entourage, and Beau now understands that just because he’s not with the same people as he was the night before doesn’t mean he’s not with them at all. He looks at Beau and she feels herself wither, struggles against the feeling as hard as she can.

“You’d better not have alcohol at that party,” he says to the boy, and he looks past them, back towards the party end of the corridor, “That’s all I’m saying.”

The purple boy snorts and looks to the side, bringing one hand up to scratch the side of his head beneath one jewel-encrusted horn, “Oh, I’d never-”

“Molly!” Comes a voice from the corridor, and Beau turns around too fast, slapping her hands back against the wall to keep her balance before she falls. Three people are walking up that end of the corridor, too, fast enough that they catch up in no time at all. Jester in the front, stomping angrily, Fjord hurrying up behind her with a concerned expression, and between them is the tall girl from the party. At the time, she’d been the tallest person ever, but this Lorenzo guy has even her beat.

It was the tall girl who’d shouted, and Lorenzo looks between all three of them. He drops his head and laughs, but he’s not amused, it doesn’t take a genius to be able to tell.

“Go have your fun,” he says, and he turns around, the other two following suit. As they’re walking away, the short girl looks over her shoulder, but her expression’s a mess, unreadable.

“That sorted that out,” says the boy who must be Molly, and he dusts his hands theatrically, “Really saved my ass that time, Yasha, thought I was gonna get slaughtered by the long arm of justice-”

One large hand claps him on the shoulder and he stops, frozen in place.

“I’d like you to apologise,” Yasha says, and while they’re having a moment Jester rushes in, slinging Beau’s arm over her shoulders and giving her a worried once-over.

“Sorry,” Molly says to Yasha, and using the hand on his shoulder she spins him around to face Beau instead. He grimaces, a weird sort of smile. One hand gestures vaguely in the air and, if she squints, Beau can see his tail’s doing the same in the air behind him. “Sorry?”

“For what?” Yasha says flatly. Beau’s never been so grateful and so all-consumingly uncomfortable at the same time in her life.

“For giving you alcohol?” Molly says tentatively, and when Yasha doesn’t move he adds, “And for getting you in trouble. Nearly.”

“I don’t care,” Beau says, and she means it. Fuck that – that’s what she _wanted_ , right?

Clearly Yasha’s satisfied with Molly’s response, or at least she’s not about to push further for a better answer that she knows won’t come. She lets go of Molly’s shoulder, and he has a second to breathe before Fjord steps in, smaller but no less threatening.

“You can’t give a alcohol to a fifteen year old-” is all Beau picks up before Jester starts to whisper in her ear, breath tickling the back of her neck.

“You’ve had a really fun night, huh?”

Beau thinks for a moment, “Yeah.”

“Let’s go to bed,” Jester says, and she hauls Beau back upright, one hand holding Beau’s wrist over her shoulder and the other around her waist. It’s like a strange, sideways dance. Whatever buzz Beau had been feeling before, it’s completely worn off in the short time between the common room and this point in the corridor. Bed sounds really, really good right now.

Walking back to their room feels a bit like walking in space, disconnected from the floor, tethered only to Jester’s strong grip. She can’t focus on anything but keeping her stomach as calm as she can, and doesn’t even notice when they leave Molly and Yasha behind, only that the group seems to be quieter.

“Jester,” she mumbles, “I feel sick.”

“Aw, shit,” Jester says, and she picks up the pace, “You didn’t have to drink anything, you know.”

“You didn’t tell me that,” Beau says, and she presses her face into Jester’s neck where it meets her shoulder. She smells nice, like sweets and summer and the colour pink. “You smell good.” Jester giggles, but she doesn’t say anything, and the little sober demon in Beau’s brain is screaming at her.

“Nearly there,” Fjord says, snapping Beau out of her weird drunk trance, and they wait for a second as Fjord opens the door. A door. It turns out to be the door to Jester and Beau’s room, and Jester very carefully drops Beau onto her bed.

“Thanks,” Beau says, even though her head is spinning and her stomach is a mess. She can’t feel her legs, and her teeth are numb, even when she grinds them together.

“It’s okay!” Jester says, and she stops Fjord just as he’s trying to leave the room. “Fjord! Beau doesn’t have any sheets!”

“Beau doesn’t have any sheets?”

“No, she doesn’t!” Jester grabs a small pink bin from under her desk and stations it by Beau’s bed. When Beau rolls over, she can she that the bottom’s full of receipts and plastic wrapping and a piece of frayed ribbon.

“Well, I’ll see what I can do,” Fjord says, and in a way this is the most embarrassing part of the night.

“You don’t have to,” Beau says, but no one seems to hear her. She doesn’t need sheets – she won’t be here long enough to use them, and she has Jester’s blanket until then anyway – and she doesn’t need their pity. And they’re both sober. Well, Jester is. Fjord’s a mystery. Fjord’s gone.

“Are you going to brush your teeth?”

“No,” Beau replies, and she reaches for the blanket, tries a few times before she can get a purchase on it and pull it up over her shoulder. Her mouth does feel pretty bad.

“You’ll feel better in the morning if you do,” Jester says.

“Goodnight, Jester,” Beau says instead, and she pulls the blanket up further, over her head. If her parents could see her now, they’d be so disappointed. Good.

When Jester speaks, her voice is muffled by the fabric covering Beau’s ears. “Goodnight, Beau.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> updates might be a lil bit later than i thought they'd be - i lost 15k of my first draft but the new stuff is better!! lov u guys, thank you so much for the lovely comments <3


	4. Chapter 4

“Wake up, Beau!”

Beau rolls over, one arm slinging off the bed, and it takes a moment to right herself. One dizzy, light-headed moment.

“’M awake,” Beau says, and her mouth and throat feel stuffed with cotton wool. Itchy cotton wool. And she feels greasy all over. She feels like the splotchy ceiling looks.

“You should be,” Jester trills, wrapped in a bathrobe and dripping water from her hair all over the carpet, trailing damp patches from the door.

“I shouldn’t,” Beau says, and she tries to roll over, but Jester puts a hand out to stop her.

“You have class,” Jester isn’t even trying to break it gently – or maybe it hasn’t occurred to her that she should.

Right now, if Beau could suffocate herself with her pillow, she would. “Oh, fuck.”

“You have Miss Keyleth!” Jester sings, and Beau can’t see her from the depths of her pillowcase but Jester’s clasping her hands and looking dreamily up at the ceiling. “You know, I only get to see her twice a week and I always wanted her for form but I got-”

“What time is it?” Beau asks in a shockingly lucid moment of hungover terror.

Jester pauses in similar shock, “Oh. Half past eight. That’s why I woke you up.”

Half past eight. Earlier than usual for a school day – but then, she has no idea where’s she’s supposed to be. Maybe that can work to her advantage, though.

Jester continues when Beau doesn’t reply, “I think your classroom is near mine.”

Maybe not, then. “Give me a minute,” Beau grumbles, and the dry feeling in her mouth is really, really unpleasant. And just the feeling she has all over. Ten minutes to get up, five minutes to get dressed, five minutes to pack her bag, and then Jester will probably want to leave because she’s a good kid who just wants to get to form on time. And Beau says, without thinking twice (or even once) about it, “Thanks, Jester.”

“No problem, Beau!” Jester beams, and she starts to dry her hair with a towel that’s surely too vibrantly pink to be a real thing that Beau’s seeing this early in the morning. Anything, right now, is too vibrant to be seen. Despite being thoroughly glued to the bed with sweat and longing, Beau peels herself out of the one blanket she has, and she digs around in her suitcase for a towel. Oh, thank fuck her parents buy soft, easy to steal towels, because this big beige thing is literally the best thing Beau’s ever felt in her life.

“I’m going for a shower,” Beau says, “Wait for me.” She doesn’t wait around for an answer. For entirely selfish reasons, she hopes Jester waits.

This morning, the bathroom is packed full of kids just as late to class as Beau is – good to know some people aren’t as chipper as Jester. It would be a relief if it didn’t mean she’s got to wait an extra few minutes, leaning against the slippery bathroom wall with her arms folded, like the water seeping into her shirt isn’t bothering her immensely. Like the room isn’t spinning now that she’s standing still. Oh, shit – maybe she’s still drunk from the night before. That’s a thing, right? Beau feels queasy, and it’s not just the alcohol.

Someone vacates a shower cubicle at just the right moment and Beau dives into it, tossing her clothes to the side and turning the water on full blast, which turns out to be as effective as trying to wash her hair in the back garden in the freezing rain. Still, it takes five minutes and she’s clean. And considerably less nauseous. Time is ticking. She drags a comb through her wet hair, pulling out enough strands to hurt but not enough that she’s bald, and turns the shower back on long enough to wet her toothbrush and brush her teeth. Fuck the mirror. She’s only gonna look worse from here on out. Her uniform sits on the ledge of the stall, stiffly folded, and it’s not any nicer to put on than it is to look at. There’s a tie. It’s blue. She knows how to tie it in three different ways. She leaves it untied.

Back in the bedroom, Jester is in her own uniform and clearly antsy to get to lesson. Beau’s dressed, but she still needs to pack her bag, and Jester stands by the door the whole time while Beau dumps everything out of her rucksack. Searching through the pile of stuff, she grabs a pencil case (denim, ratty, a gift) and her timetable from on top of the bedside cabinet. The bag is unsettlingly light on her shoulders.

“Right,” she says, and Jester’s head pricks up, “Ready to go.”

Jester nods, and holds the door open for Beau to leave first. She doesn’t look too worried as Beau passes her, but her own bag’s packed full to bursting, another collection of brightly coloured charms swinging threateningly off the zip.

“Am I missing something?” Beau asks as Jester passes her, pointing half-heartedly at the bag.

Jester bites the inside of her cheek, “I don’t think so? You don’t have any books or anything yet, do you?” For such a short person, she walks more quickly than Beau would like. She supposes that’s the difference between them both – Jester doesn’t want to be late, and Beau intends on it.

“You can’t have _that_ many books,” Beau says, and Jester shakes her head.

“There’s other stuff in there,” she says, and despite being so set on her goal, she’s still got that mischievous glimmer in her eyes, “Look.” Still walking at her incredibly fast pace, she unhooks her bag from one arm, swings it around, and flips open the top. Inside (and Beau should have known), it’s almost overflowing with sweets, and chocolate, and two bottles of pink lemonade.

“You’re gonna eat all of that?” Beau asks.

Jester hoists the bag back onto her shoulders, “Most of it! I’m bringing an extra drink for Fjord – he always forgets his.”

“Why don’t you just tell him to buy his own?” Beau asks, more blunt than she could have been but, hey, she’s right.

Jester just giggles and shrugs a little, “Well, you know.”

Beau doesn’t know, but she doesn’t say anything else. That’s not a conversation she’s interested in, not now and not later. They pass the crypt’s staircase again, and Beau knows it more now by its surroundings than by any particular markings it has, and it’s both too long and not long at all before they reach Beau’s classroom. Doors line one side of the thin corridor, and windows on the other. Jester pulls her to a stop a door before the one written on Beau’s timetable, and through the window Beau can see the square courtyard two floors below, a few stragglers hurrying to class, a dozen black birds hopping around a rather ostentatious fountain. As she looks, one of them seems to peer back at her, pausing its dance to cock its head in the direction of the house.

“He’s looking at you!” Jester cries, slapping her hands on the windowpane, and as if it could hear her the bird hops backwards, startled, and goes back to its group. Maybe the feeling in Beau’s chest is disappointment. It’s a bird, and it can’t even see her. Jester turns to her, and takes either end of Beau’s tie firmly in her hands. “Do you not know how to tie a tie?”

“Leave it,” Beau says, pushing Jester’s hands away, and there’s that same feeling again when her hands fall away so easily. Disappointment.

Jester doesn’t seem to harbor any of those terrible inexplicable hungover emotions. Her hands grip the straps of her backpack, heels clicking against the floor. “Are you nervous?”

“Nervous?” Beau says, and she sticks her hands in the pockets of her too-warm, itchy blazer where Jester can’t see how shaky they’ve become, “Me? No.”

“Didn’t think so,” Jester beams, “You’ll have a really good time! Miss Keyleth is _so_ nice, and I can meet you at lunch, and if you have any questions about your lessons or the school or anything you can ask me or you can ask Miss Keyleth, or, or Fjord-”

“That’s really nice,” Beau says, and she takes a step back, “I’ll let you go to lesson.”

Jester smiles again, warm and kind and impish. “Okay, you too! I’m just down the corridor, go to the hall at lunch and I’ll wait for you!”

“Bye,” Beau says as Jester walks backwards a few steps, then turns and speedwalks her way to her own form room. She looks out of the window again. All the birds are gone, and so are the students. Such a big place, and look how empty it is. It’s just her, only her left. She could turn and leave, go back to bed and pull the covers over her head and go back to sleep. But she can’t be a nuisance if she never turns up.

Beau rolls her sleeves up to the elbows. Doesn’t that look so much cooler? Doesn’t that just scream teen rebellion? The door handle is cold, and when she pushes open the door, everyone turns to look at her.

Unlike what Beau’s used to, the room is relatively small, no more than maybe fifteen people paired up at desks arranged in a horseshoe shape around the whiteboard at the front of the room. At the front, to the side, is the teacher’s desk. Generic teacher stuff is stacked on it; a collection of papers and a pot of brightly coloured stationery and a globe, and a fresh-looking bunch of little flowers sitting in what looks to be a large teacup. The teacher stands in the centre of the horseshoe, looking at her – Keyleth, the redheaded lady from Friday night. She looks different. Framed in the daylight of the far window, she doesn’t look like a teacher. She looks like a mother, almost. Not Beau’s. Someone else’s mother. She looks like she should be standing in an open field, not a shitty old building like this.

“Oh!” Keyleth says, and she stretches a hand towards the door, fingers wiggling in a gentle beckoning sort of way, “Beau! Everyone, this is Beau. Say hello.”

Around a dozen people stare back at her, all different ages. Some of the younger kids (not the youngest, they don’t care) give her a quiet hello, an older girl gives her a confident wave. One of the sixth formers looks familiar (but not _too_ familiar), and the other one sits back in his chair, sleeves rolled up, tie missing completely. Beau shuffles closer, towards the centre but out of Keyleth’s reach, despite the encouraging look on her face.

“Could you say something about yourself, please?” Keyleth asks, and when Beau doesn’t open her mouth she adds, “It can be anything?”

Beau takes another look around the room. “Hey,” she says, and even to her own ears her voice sounds deeper, more gruff, “I just moved here.”

Keyleth gives her a thumbs up. “From..?”

Beau grimaces, and Keyleth hardly even looks disappointed. She’s going to be a tough nut to crack. Not that that’s ever stopped Beau before. She takes a seat at the back of the classroom.

Most of the attention on her fades before form’s even over. They do a couple of icebreaker activities, but they’re mainly for the year seven kids, whose introductions Beau had already missed. Keyleth does seem nice enough, though, and it’s easy to see why Jester would want to be in this classroom. Maybe whoever Jester has for form is an asshole, and Beau can swap with her. Make their life a misery, instead.

As they leave for the first real lesson of the day, Beau’s stopped by a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“I hope you settle in here,” Keyleth’s smile is a little hesitant, a little fragile around the edges. It’s a smile that makes Beau want to smile back. She doesn’t. “Change can be hard.”

“I know,” Beau says, and she ducks away, slipping out of the door with the rest of the class.

Lesson change is the busiest Beau’s ever seen the corridors, and suddenly the sheer scale of the school seems justified. If anything, it seems too small now, and Beau has to squeeze against the very left of the wall to keep from being squished. She checked her timetable before she left, but she still feels a little like death, and maybe she’d misread it. Huddled in the first alcove she finds, Beau pulls the timetable from her pocket, scrutinising it as quickly as she can. It still says Maths. Aw, fuck.

Like any school she’s ever known, the maths block is in a building separate from the school itself, although here it’s in what looks like renovated stables instead of those brown temporary buildings left to rot in the school field forever. The building she’s looking for isn’t too hard to find, but the weather seems to have jumped full force into autumn and, as she hurries across the courtyard she’d seen from the second floor window, it begins to rain. Not hard enough to soak her through, but it’s cold and her hair’s wet. As she reaches the classroom door, a hand stretches past her and opens it.

“After you,” says the tall, solid girl from the night before. Yasha. Hello, Yasha. She’s wearing a yellow tie.

“I can open doors,” Beau says, ducking under her arm. Yasha seems fine, even better than fine. Something is still rotting in the back of Beau’s throat, apparently.

“Good for you,” Yasha says, and she follows Beau into the classroom and towards an empty desk at the back.

After a quick scan of the room, it seems like there are no other empty tables, just single spaces next to people she doesn’t know. “Can I sit with you?”

Yasha shrugs, “Sure.” She swings a heavy messenger bag under the table, and pulls a single pen from a side pocket. Yasha’s big and scary, so maybe that’ll mean no one will notice her sitting in the next chair over. Plus she hadn’t spoken too much at the party, so hopefully she won’t expect too much from her right now. If anything, she’s just the friend of a friend of someone Beau’s literally just met, so they have next to nothing to speak about. It’s a perfect match.

“Sorry about-” Yasha says, keeping her voice low and her eye on the door, “-Molly.”

Mollymauk; the friend of the acquaintance. The one with the alcohol. “It’s no problem.”

“He’s very-” Yasha cuts herself off again, “-excitable.”

As much as a conversation is the last thing Beau wants, there’s one opening up right in front of her. “Looks like he doesn’t like that Lorenzo guy very much, huh?”

Yasha snorts, and she leans forwards, puts her hands together on the table. “He’s a prick.”

Beau copies her movements. “Sounds like it. What did he do?”

Just as Yasha’s about to answer, the door finally opens, a remarkably frazzled man squeezing through the gap. He’s barely holding a stack of books, and as he reaches the front desk they surge forwards and slip across the table and onto the floor.

“Your regular teacher won’t be here,” he says, pushing hair out of his face and bending down to pick up the books, “So you’ll be having me until he’s back.”

Yasha leans over and hisses out of the corner of her mouth, “Wasn’t here most of last year, either. This guy teaches creative writing. Molly barely passed.”

“Writing or maths?”

Yasha pauses, lost in thought for a moment. “Both.” Books are handed out, with orange covers and squared pages that smell oddly and strongly like fish. Beau writes her name on the front – _Beauregard, Maths_. Across the name, Yasha fills out her cover with painstakingly neat handwriting.

“What are you doing at lunch?” Beau murmurs, keeping her attention at the front of the room but tilting to the side, just slightly.

Yasha keeps her head down, opening her book and lining the margin of the first page. “I don’t know. Find Molly, I think.”

“That’s cool.” Beau flips her own book open, bending the cover back and forth so it lies flat on the table. She could see Yasha sitting with Jester, maybe. And then she wouldn’t have to third-wheel Jester and Fjord. But she’ll be fucked if she’s going to fifth-wheel the lot of them. “I was just gonna, uh – I might have a wander, you know. Get used to the place.”

“Mm-hmm,” Yasha says, and without her even paying attention the board’s already covered in writing. And Yasha seems sensible, too sensible to waste the first lesson of the term talking to Beau.

If she sets her mind to it (and she does, eventually), the lesson flies by, and it’s time for the next. Beau follows Yasha from room to room, and the cycle starts up again – Beau sits next to Yasha, talks to her until Yasha stops paying attention, and she writes down the bare minimum of information from the board. Begrudgingly, Beau realises that the more she writes, the more she wants to write. After all, it’s not the learning that’s bad, it’s – it’s the situation.

Lunchtime can’t come soon enough. When it does, Yasha walks with her halfway to the main hall, until she’s gone. Disappeared into thin air. Taking a second to look around, Beau can’t see her anywhere. It’s as if she’s vanished completely. It was good while it lasted. Inside, the hall is mainly full of younger kids. And Jester, over at the side of the room. And Fjord, with a few people standing barely two feet behind him.

“Beau!” Jester cries out as soon as she notices her, waving enthusiastically, and Fjord raises an awkward hand alongside her. His face betrays concern, eyebrows furrowed, and as Beau gets closer she can see a hint of upset on Jester’s face. Just a hint.

“Hey,” Beau says, “We staying here?” She considers the other people standing around the table for a second, and she’s not surprised to find that she doesn’t recognise them. All of them, though, have the little house leader badge.

“Um,” Jester says, “I don’t really know.”

“I’ve got a meeting,” Fjord says with an apologetic sort of half-smile, half-grimace, “It’s only because it’s the first day back. I can sit with you guys tomorrow.”

“That’s fine!” Jester flaps her hands at him, with a sweet smile that doesn’t quite sit the way it should. “Go and have your meeting, you can tell me all about it when you get back!”

“Alright,” Fjord says, and he teeters hesitantly between Jester and the group behind him, “I’ll be back as soon as I can, okay?”

“Okay!” Jester flaps her hands one last time, as Fjord leaves. As soon as he’s gone, she huffs, slumping back against the chair. She turns to Beau, pouting. “He doesn’t even get a lunch break today! That’s so unfair.”

“Tell me about it,” Beau says lamely, with the tone of voice that she hopes says, _please don’t._

“It just sucks,” Jester groans, and she unzips her bag. It’s still full to bursting, although more jostled around since this morning. Some of the sweet packets are noticeably empty, and one bottle is half gone.

More than ever, Beau’s backpack feels uncomfortably light. She slings it down onto a chair, and sits down on the one next to it. Jester digs through her bag to find a very squashed sandwich wrapped in cling film with very red jam leaking out of the sides. Taking an oversized bite, half the filling drips down the corner of her mouth.

“Do you want some?” Jester asks through a mouthful of sandwich, waving the other half of it in the air in front of Beau’s face.

Beau shakes her head. “I just ate, thanks.”

“Suit yourself,” Jester says, finishing the rest in two more bites and washing the whole thing down with lemonade. She burps.

Beau fiddles with the edge of her blazer. It’s scratchier than the other uniforms she’s used to. Jester rips open a pack of gummy sweets and a few fly across the room – Beau catches one and silently hands it back to her.

“You’re super talented,” Jester says between chews, “Do you do sports?”

Beau plans to shake her head _no_ , but she’s beaten to it by a cough from behind her.

“Excuse me,” says a young voice, a scratchy voice, a nervous voice, “Are you saving that seat?”

In the time between arriving in the hall and now, the room’s filled up, and it really does seem as though the only empty chair is the one occupied by Beau’s backpack.

“It’s free!” Jester exclaims, and she pats rapidly on Beau’s shoulder, “Beau, move your bag, move your bag.”

Beau slides it off the chair, and it lands lopsided on the dirty floor. It sags, unhappy.

“I won’t be any trouble,” the girl says. She’s very short – face-to-face with a seated Beau – and she’s green. Her tie has been pulled haphazardly to one side. When she sits on the chair, her feet barely brush the floor, and her long hair swoops down in front of her face when she leans forwards. The school dinner tray she’s just put down looks about as good and fresh as Beau feels.

“Hello, nice to meet you, my name is Jester,” Jester extends her hand past Beau, outstretched in the direction of the newcomer, “What’s your name?”

It takes a second of awkward hand-waving before the girl notices and carefully, lightly takes Jester’s hand in hers. One firm, solid shake from Jester and she’s done, snatching her hand back to the recesses of her blazer. Jester’s still smiling, like it’s a reflex by now. It must be, dealing with Beau for so many days.

“My name is Nott,” she says, and she scrutinises her tray for a moment before tearing the end off a hunk of bread. Her button nose scrunches up. “Oh, that’s dry.”

“School food is super gross,” Jester says, an equally disgusted look on her own face, “Take some of these.” She holds out the last half of her bag of gummy sweets, tips a handful into Nott’s eager palm. “Are you new?”

Nott nods, “Transferred.”

“Oh, so did Beau!” Jester points at Beau, and Nott seems to see her for the first time. “Beau, this is Nott.”

Beau nods, even though the longer Nott looks at her, the more those big yellow burn into her with a ferocious intensity.

And then – “You grabbed me!”

“I fucking didn’t,” Beau says, taken aback by the sudden outburst, “Why would I do that?”

“Yeah,” Jester tacks on, but she doesn’t seem so sure.

“On Friday!” Nott says, and a sweet shakes out of her fist, “You grabbed me outside the school!”

Shit, that’s right. Friday night, in the rain. Lying to Fjord. Beau grabbed some kid’s arm – or at least she’d thought it was a kid. Most teenagers are taller. Maybe that’s a plan she didn’t think through so well.

She could say sorry.

“Pretty sure I didn’t do that.”

Nott peers at her, and gives her _such_ a disgusted look. More disgusted than she’d been at the bread just a minute ago. Even Jester’s wearing a frown, although she’s trying her best to hide it. Nott raises an eyebrow. “Pretty sure.”

Beau waves her hand dismissively, “I’m sure, alright?”

“Whatever you say.” Nott goes right back to her food, glancing up once to share a look with Jester. What kind of look it is, Beau can’t tell. Jester’s difficult enough, but Nott’s almost impossible to read.

Time passes slowly, so slowly. High up on the wall is the fanciest clock Beau’s ever seen, and it ticks so slowly that it must be broken, somehow. All school clocks are broken. And she’s hungry. This isn’t like at home, where she could take stuff out of the kitchen whenever she wanted. There are rules here. Not that she needs to follow them. After all, the kitchen must be close by, and no locked door’s stopped her yet.

“What are you thinking about, Beau?” Jester asks, head propped up in her hand, shaking Beau right out of whatever trance she’s been sitting in.

“Huh?” She says, and catches herself, “Oh. Timetable stuff.”

“Are you excited for your next lesson?”

Beau shrugs, and takes a peek at Nott from the corner of her eye. She’s just sitting there, working her way through the last of her dinner. She has dessert, some kind of yellow cake with goopy icing, and most of the dry bread from earlier. She looks up, and Beau isn’t quite fast enough to turn away in time.

“Are you hungry?” Nott says, and Beau’s in the middle of turning away for real this time when Nott shoves the bread in her hand. “Eat that.”

“Are you making fun of me?” Beau asks, and she holds the piece of bread with vast skepticism. Apart from the missing end, it’s intact.

“You look hungry,” Nott says, and she starts stabbing at the cake with a spoon, despondently pushing the crumbs around the bowl. “This is just terrible.”

While Nott’s distracted, Beau drops the bread in her pocket, and Jester gives her a very sneaky thumbs up.

“Do you know where your next lesson is?” Jester asks as Nott finally pushes her tray away, “Do you need me to walk you?”

Nott pulls back and shakes her head, fiddling with her blazer the same way that Beau had done. “No, thanks. I’ve got a friend showing me around.” She looks towards the exit, and, when she looks back up towards the great clock, almost falls out of her seat. Jumping down, she snatches her bag up off the floor and grabs her tray, barely keeping it upright as she goes. “I’ve got to go now!”

“Oh no!” Jester cries, hand flying across the table, “We could all walk together?”

“I’m okay, thanks, bye!” With that, Nott’s gone, tearing across the hall to the door. She tips all the rubbish off her tray into the bin, stacks the bowl and plate in the wrong place, skips the cutlery, and dumps the tray altogether. For how heavy the door is, she heaves it open surprisingly far. Through the gap, for just a split second, Beau sees a face. A cold eye, looking directly at her. And then Nott’s gone, the door swinging back into place once again.

Jester rustles through her sweet packets and finishes her lemonade. “She was pretty fun, huh?”

“Huh,” Beau repeats. The piece of bread makes a lump in her pocket where her hand rests, a solid weight on one side. There’ll be crumbs for weeks. She picks up her bag, places it on her lap, but she doesn’t move. Jester looks at her, she can feel her watching intently for whatever happens next. Beau stifles a sigh. In classic school fashion, time passes when she’s forgotten to watch the clock. “I should get to class.”

Jester nods, but they just sit there. Looking at each other. Not saying a word.


End file.
